So, is there any program besides VGMTrans that can convert SBNK to DLS? I'm trying to use it wil Monster Tale's sdat, but it keeps freeze when VGMTrans loads it. Any other SDAT works fine, Puyo Puyo, MegaMan Zero. Puyo Puyo's SDAT is bigger than Monster Tale.

Actually, I think MT's SDAT has some type of encryption or is a new format. The sseq converted doesn't even work. It works, but doesn't. The midi comes out broken.

I have neither the time or inclination at this point to do a full audit of the file but crystaltile2 seems to parse it- dodgy output of conversion tools is nothing new and this might just be an example of a bad one although ndssndext did falter which is unusual*.

*I did a verbose output and kicked it to a text file which gave me the following sample (only 2 sequences converted- 0003 and 001A which I think corresponds to SEQ_GET_ABILITY and SEQ_NEW_PET_ABILITY )

I guess then it might be a new/improperly implemented command in SSEQ those two files did not use which coupled with names and sizes I am going to call the others all actual music rather than those two which look to be (and play like) jingles at best.

I did however manage to punch vgmtoolbox hard enough that it spat out some mini2sf files which foobar seems to be playing although I am far too lazy right now to source and test them against the game (it is an emulated format apparently and most other 2sf file packs I have heard are near 1:1 so I imagine it is pretty good).

As for non SDAT there are a fair few these days
Electroplankton (straight up wave files), N+ (PCM audio), TWEWY (and loads of other games using CRI middleware's stuff- adx/ahx), brothers in arms (not entirely sure- everything uses similar extensions and packing), zombie daisuki and Inazuma Eleven both share an odd format and there probably a few others to boot. Granted most of those are variations on PCM rather than anything resembling a tracker format.

Either way very interesting- it looks like I could stand to return to fiddling with

So, is there any program besides VGMTrans that can convert SBNK to DLS? I'm trying to use it wil Monster Tale's sdat, but it keeps freeze when VGMTrans loads it. Any other SDAT works fine, Puyo Puyo, MegaMan Zero. Puyo Puyo's SDAT is bigger than Monster Tale.

Actually, I think MT's SDAT has some type of encryption or is a new format. The sseq converted doesn't even work. It works, but doesn't. The midi comes out broken.

SFX.... ehh as it can very much depend upon the game.
Many games just use SSEQ (pokemon going quite far in it and using it for almost everything if you want an example of the extremes) - these you can take out with the standard repoint out of the SDAT file or one of a few other methods (replace SSEQ with silence, drop SSEQ volume, kill the bank and on and on). For the repointing I have a reasonably worked version in the hacking docs but http://gbatemp.net/threads/audio-swapping-question.122534/ might be the thread you were thinking of.
Other games will use a large SWAR file (I was using a Castlevania game as part of my hacking docs and it had some 1600 files in there, I also ended up looking at NSMB another time and it was equally fun). Trouble with these is they are not named so you will have to search in them to find the files you want, being wave samples it is not so bad to make new ones for. I believe tinke might even be able to import things here but I have not checked that.
Some games will use straight STRM for some sound effects too. STRM are not that bad to edit either.

It appears to use SDAT and has some files in the audio folder. They do not have the sdat extension (rather dsxe) and they do not play nicely with vgmtrans, crystaltile2 or tinke.

Rather nicely it seems it has split the FX and the music files from each other and named them accordingly. The FX is one long bank of 170 sfx files (I listened to the lot) though VGMtrans seems to miss the STRM stuff that the nice developer left header file has mentioned (not to mention just extracting the files only gives you a 2.25 meg file compared to the 5.18 one it came from).

The obvious thing of replacing the file with a bunch of 00 did not get far, I could probably fiddle around and see how much of the header it needs or not but that is too much like hard work (I tested a few things anyway and it errored out shortly before the title screen). Fortunately we are playing with SSAR today so volume values are back in play- volume is contained within the SSAR itself and within the data section of the SSAR ( http://kiwi.ds.googlepages.com/sdat.html ).

If you want to be lazy grab your hex editor and do a find and replace for 00007F60 with 00000060 . As it happens 00007F60 only appears in the offending SDAT in the offending sections. I tested it in desmume and you should be good. The 7f in this case corresponds to 127 decimal or the highest supported volume, depending upon how you want to play it you could even mix and match SFX to be muted or change volumes relative to the rest.

All in all though I have certainly released patches with messier underlying logic I still reckon it could stand to be a bit more elegant and if I did it might help the framerate a touch (assuming it is the CPU that bottlenecks it), that said if it crashes I will be shocked as it is using functionality baked into the game itself and it should not trouble any other hacks or mods you might want to use though do apply this one first if you are going to play with other mods. I might be able to turn it into a cheat format but I have really tried it before for files that are not the actual binary, a bit of data in memory from the firmware or an overlay.
Again if you want rather than replacing all the SFX you could go through and disable say the voiceovers (they got on my nerves and I only tested the thing)- they should still be the same order as they are in the "fx.dsxe.h" file though do note that file also includes a few STRM files so start counting from the first "FX_" file.